Citation and License

BMC Research Notes 2012, 5:223
doi:10.1186/1756-0500-5-223

Published: 9 May 2012

Abstract

Scientific progress is driven by the availability of information, which makes it essential
that data be broadly, easily and rapidly accessible to researchers in every field.
In addition to being good scientific practice, provision of supporting data in a convenient
way increases experimental transparency and improves research efficiency by reducing
unnecessary duplication of experiments. There are, however, serious constraints that
limit extensive data dissemination. One such constraint is that, despite providing
a major foundation of data to the advantage of entire community, data producers rarely
receive the credit they deserve for the substantial amount of time and effort they
spend creating these resources. In this regard, a formal system that provides recognition
for data producers would serve to incentivize them to share more of their data.

The process of data citation, in which the data themselves are cited and referenced
in journal articles as persistently identifiable bibliographic entities, is a potential
way to properly acknowledge data output. The recent publication of several sorghum
genomes in Genome Biology is a notable first example of good data citation practice in the field of genomics
and demonstrates the practicalities and formatting required for doing so. It also
illustrates how effective use of persistent identifiers can augment the submission
of data to the current standard scientific repositories.